Hey, writing a meditation with no replies is not unlike 90%
of blogs out there. :)
I think merlyn once said that
blogging is like making a speech to a big empty hall. :)

As for getting no replies, I don't stress over that.
I enjoy the act of writing. Plus, I've received
enjoyable feedback from serious golfers
(such as hallvabo, mtve, Jasper, J_-_L,
emiltin, rhebus, o0lit3, murky-satyr, primo, grimy)
which indicates that my exposes are read
and appreciated. The people who get the
most out of them are probably serious golfers
who have actually played in the challenges
and who are mostly not members of Perl monks.
So why write these golf articles on Perl Monks?
Why not start my own blog instead?
Ironically, my "no replies" nodes notwithstanding,
I feel I am likely to get more replies on Perl monks
than I would if I wrote some obscure blog.
Plus Perl Monks is a very comfortable place
for me.

As for the state I'm in when writing my golf exposes,
from your three choices, I would choose "golf zone".
While I find my "writing zone" to be pretty much the
same mental state no matter which topic I'm writing on,
I feel that my "writing zone" is a different
mental state to my "programming zone", which is
different to my "playing golf zone".

When writing, I am focusing on story-telling,
trying not to bore the reader. Trying not to be
too dry by throwing in a few jokes, but also trying
not to irritate the reader by using too much humour.
That is a very different mental state to programming or golfing.

Though I enjoy programming, golfing, and writing,
I usually enjoy writing more than the other two.
I'm getting too old for golf nowadays.

Comment on
Re^2: Compression in Golf: Part III (Zone, Bubble or Hole?)

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other